After a summer of sweeping administrative changes, the latest incarnation of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study’s Bunting Fellowship program is beginning to take shape, and a new dean for science is looking to “radically change” how Radcliffe contributes to scientific research.
With a new fellowship director, a new name and two newly created positions—a dean of science and a dean of social science—Radcliffe is trying to strengthen its academic mission and improve the Institute’s internal organization.
The staff changes are the latest move in Radcliffe’s ongoing attempt to redefine itself along the guidelines given by an ad hoc committee report released last February. The report advised the Institute to make the fellowship program the core of Radcliffe’s work.
As a result, this year all Institute fellows are called Radcliffe Fellows, a profound change from past years where fellows were scattered among the different Radcliffe divisions, like the Bunting Institute or the Murray Research Center.
“The [fellowship] program is now unified,” says Radcliffe Associate Dean for Advancement Tamara Elliott Rogers ’74.
In August, Radcliffe Dean Drew Gilpin Faust selected Judith E. Vichniac, a former director of studies in Harvard’s social studies department, to be Radcliffe’s new fellowship director.
Vichniac says she is charged with making the fellowship program “the heart of Radcliffe” and increasing the fellows’ ties to Harvard faculty.
Vichniac, who began her work at Radcliffe at the end of September, says this is a “very exciting moment for Radcliffe and myself. There aren’t many opportunities in one’s life tohelp shape a new institution.”
Though she says she is still adjusting to her job at the moment, she adds that she hopes to create an environment in which learning takes place “within and across disciplines” at Radcliffe.
“One of my roles is helping create a community of scholars and artists who interact with one another,” she says.
A Scientific Revolution
Over the last decade, Radcliffe’s presence in the sciences has dwindled, according to Barbara J. Grosz, Gordon McKay professor of computer science and the Institute’s new dean of science.
“We need to radically change the science program,” she says.
At the moment, Grosz says she is “taking the pulse of the different sciences” and trying to get a sense of how Harvard’s science departments can work with Radcliffe.
“Radcliffe can play a very important role, not just in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences but also in other faculties of the University,” she says.
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